el blog no. 6: Salvation Army is Tech Savvy

As I had written in a previous el blog the Salvation Army solicitors were one way in which I was affected by the organization; later I realized that the Salvation Army played a larger role in my life. As winter break approaches my mother constantly reminds me of her plans to reorganize and clean the house when I get home. Typically people refer to the time when you go through old clothes and boxes in your closet and around the house as “spring cleaning”, but because my brothers and I are away at school during the spring she has adopted “WINTER cleaning.” Now some people just take their old things to the dump, but my family insists on donating our things to the Salvation Army. To be honest the place felt like a dump to me and I felt it to be a waste of time, but after researching the Salvation Army I have realized how important this civil society organization is.

I have come to find out that thrift stores are just one of numerous ways that the Salvation Army is serving the American people today. They encourage monetary donations that you most commonly see collected by people stand outside of grocery stores with the red kettle and a bell. Also, they have adopted online donations that are easily collected electronically from the comfort of your home. In addition they accept automobile donations and volunteer help. A unique and easy way to give this holiday season that I found was the donation of your accrued air miles to help Salvation Army personnel quickly travel for disaster relief. The Salvation Army has teamed up with United Airlines to make this possible. The Salvation Army is very technologically savvy too; they have created a concept called the virtual kettle where you can get your family and friends to donate online to your personal kettle. This is an inventive way to set a target donation goal and accumulate donations online.

On my last blog about the Salvation Army I realized how civil society can physically affect business with solicitors outside of grocery stores, but this time around I learned how well civil society is modernizing and adapting its technology and resources to be most affective. They Salvation Army uses many very unique and effective techniques to raise donations and awareness. In today’s society communication and visibility are the biggest factors to success. Because we live in a fast paced information filled world, if you cant be very visible and relate your cause to the people with money then you will not be successful. The fact that “more than 35 million people received help from The Salvation Army in 2006” shows that they will be very effective for time to come.

This entry was posted on November 30, 2008 at 5:18 pm and filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.